G,
there seems to be a lot of options around in terms of what cars to use as the start of a project like this. How about a no brainer recipe book as to what is the minimum required for reasonable success?

eg: Take one BitCharg car. Remove components x, y and z.
Take plans provided by a helpful aeronut, add li poly of certain capacity, suitable didel power plant and gear box (all from Mr Stabler) mix according to a certain diagram, leave for 2 mins to let the glue cool and then have fun in a large room.

I think it can be so easy to get on the first rung of the ladder (a klutz like me has shown this to be true) especially with an idiot list like this. It saves having to make the call as to which components to choose and how to bung 'em together in the best way. For exmaple when Dr Chris did his 1 cell IR articles in Model Flyer I quite liked the idiot list in choosing the right power plant and prop. V helpful.

I only heard of the Microsizers/Cloes conversion thing three days ago, and it keeps fascinating me. I just ordered some to slaughter

The thing I still miss in the discussion about converting the innards to a plane are the "hard facts" about this electronics details. I have a lot of questions and hope that someone already ran some tests about :

What is the voltage of the Motor and steering coil output ?
How much current can they handle before they fry ?
Is there a internal voltage booster or does the electronics run on 1,2 V ?
How much power draws the standard motor under the usual conditions ?
Does every transmitter have this "cripple condeser" thing ?

If I increase the Transmitter volage, what happens ?
If I just increase the Reciever voltage, what happens ?

What is the current of the Transmitter attached charging device ?

OK, many questions for the moment, I hope to answer some basic questions with your answers, for example the most important one : Will a plane fly if I just put all the components into a small plane, or will it suffer from a lack of power ?

Hey Patrick I'm a big fan of yours! My first ever indoor model was a Klaustophobia (by Martin Kopplow?), not a complete success but great fun.

Anyway,

>What is the voltage of the Motor and steering coil output ?
>How much current can they handle before they fry ?

These are the same as the battery voltage less a bit for the volt drops over the transisters. Perhaps I should state this first hard fact. IMHO we need to be using 145mAh Lithium polymer cells. The board can handle it without trouble as I prove by driving my car powered by one. The speed control is pretty poor, epilot has shown that adding an external mosfet is probably a necessity.

>Is there a internal voltage booster or does the electronics run on >1,2 V ?

No booster

>How much power draws the standard motor under the usual >conditions ?

not a lot.

>If I increase the Transmitter volage, what happens ?

I have seen a tx fitted with three cells on the web, it should improve range.

>What is the current of the Transmitter attached charging >device ?

Not sure but I'm not sure it matters, the origional cells are probably little use.

>Will a plane fly if I just put all the components into a small plane, >or will it suffer from a lack of power ?

I have read that if you do the following you can get a range of like 120', way more then enough:

1) Remove the Cripple cap if the tx has one (newer ones)
2) Remove the Cripple cap if the rx has one (one one newest car)
3) Use 3-5 cells in the tx
4) Use telescopic ariel on the tx (like 2 foot)
5) Use longer ariel on the rx (like 10 cm)

So my next question is, is the large capacitor (0.6g) part of the RF circuit or the dc-dc converter circuit. If we are running from a lithium polymer we might not need it. Having said that without it running it from the lipoly might blow it up.

Now as for crippling caps, good news for cheapos like me, my car came in a snow globe type box and isn't a real bitcharger and doesn't have cripple caps on either rx or TX. I also just tried driving the tx at 4.2v. The output to the antenna went from 128mV to 208mV according to my scope, should help range a fair bit. I'll also just add a longer antenna at both ends.

I took the large capacitor off and the receiver continues to function but only when the input voltage is over 3v. The capacitor is obviously the smoothing for the DC-DC converter as I can see switching noise on the 3v rail when the input is below 3v. Once above three volts the noise disapears as the dc-dc shuts down. I guess that if I remove components to disable the dc-dc then the reciever will work with input voltages in the range of a liPoly cell and with a 0.6g weight reduction. I may find that the loss of the capacitance causes noise problems but there are many surface mount caps that are much smaller and should do the trick.